Tag Archives: barry harris guitar

Why Barry Harris has the Best Method for Chromatic Notes

Leave a reply

In my experience, the best way to learn to use chromatic passing notes in your solos is using Barry Harris Chromatic Scale. But, you have to watch out that you get it to where it becomes really amazing because there is A LOT more in there that goes far beyond chromatic notes and deep into some amazing Bebop phrasing, and you DON’T want to miss that.

The Basic Exercise

What makes this a beautiful strategy is probably that it is actually incredibly simple but also very complete, let me show you what I mean.

If you take a C major scale:

The goal is to add a chromatic note between all the notes in the scale, and for the most part, that is super easy, barely an inconvenience, but there are a few “trouble spots”.

Between C & D, and D & E you can just add a chromatic note:

But between theE and The F it is a bit more tricky

Here you can take the scale note above F, G as shown above:

From F to G, G to A, A to B, it is easy:and

again since there is no room between B and C

So you can add the B D C:

Giving you this exercise:

And you can do exactly the same going down, adding a scale note whenever there isn’t a natural chromatic leading note.

This already sounds great, and a lot more interesting than just moving in half steps, but there is a lot more to get from this, especially with those exception spots.

It works for any scale!

You should also realize that this system will work with any scale so if you take A harmonic minor that could give you this:

The Advantage – Modular Bebop

“But what is so great about a bunch of chromatic notes?”

The first advantage is having a way to insert chromatic notes before every note in a scale. This is incredibly powerful because that means that you can come up with a short lick and move it around the scale and it will work for a lot of chords.

Check out this line with 2 half-steps and an arpeggio:

And now that you have this chromatic scale, it is possible to move the line to other chords and still keep the rhythm the same.

This is the original:

on Dm7 you get:

And for Em7:

Of course, you can take this through the entire scale, but you can hear how these all work.

And notice that the Em7 line also sounds great over a Cmaj7 so you are developing solid material for several chords working like this.

Rhythm = Phrasing!

The important thing here is that Barry’s chromatic scale keeps the rhythm intact when you move around phrases, because that means that it stays solid vocabulary, if it works on one chord it will work on the others as well, but this is just the basic system, and I see quite a few students get stuck with just using only this small part of is, which is actually a pity since it can create so many other beautiful things, even chords.

Taking It Up A Level

Until now the phrases have been pretty simple, but they work well and are easy to create:

And often the emphasis is on using Barry’s chromatic scale to create lines where chord tones are on the downbeat and chromatic notes or half-steps are on the offbeat, in fact, similar to the thinking in Bebop scales, just a lot more open so that you don’t only play scale melodies all the time.

You probably know I am not a huge fan of Bebop scales.

This example isn’t wrong, but you don’t want to stop here, if you listen to Bebop lines then they are not only changing direction on the heavy beat like this one does.

Parker did it like this

A typical Bebop Line like this Parker Lick changes direction in less predictable places and that is a huge part of why it sounds good: It is more surprising and exciting.

There are different ways to describe what is going on in a lick like this, but this exercise actually can help you get more of that sound in there.

On a side note, You also want to notice that Parker doesn’t mind having a leading note on the downbeat at the beginning of the phrase, that is NOT a rule!

And whenever I say that there are people in the comments who start complaining that I say that it IS a rule. It will be interesting if they now stopped the video to start typing angrily and didn’t see this part.

It’s All About That Exception

The secret weapon you have for making stronger melodies is primarily the exceptions in the exercise, which are an incredible tool, and much more powerful than you might think!

You might wonder “why is this useful?”, but it is actually difficult to get the melodies to have a natural flow and still move around in a surprising way without sounding like a scientific experiment, and in the Barry Harris Chromatic Scale that is already there, and you can get the melody to skip around without having to do any extra work.

Take this super simple melody

You can add a half step between the B and the A:

But if you add the half step between the C and the B then you need to skip up to a higher scale note and you get a much nicer melody:

And of course, you can use this together with other half-steps and get:

There is a lot more available! I will get to the crazy chords later, but let’s first create some really great Bop lines.

The Hidden Bonus

Whenever Barry talks about this exercise in the masterclasses, he also talks about how any note can be a half-step, and I want to show you how you can use that as a method for creating some really great bop lines.

And It is easy to get to work, but also has an odd side-effect. If you start with a basic descending line like this:

Then the version you already know sounds great like this:

But you can also turn it into an amazing melody with a large 6th interval by using the 3rd as a half step, so skipping down to a lower E.

And you can of course also just choose to add the leading note below the target:

While I don’t think that chromatic leading notes have to be on an offbeat then 99% of the time these types of lines sound better if the “half step” is not on a downbeat, but you can work around that by adding a leading note to the low-leading note:

And working on this, coming up with licks where you insert these melodic skips into your solos will really make your lines go up a few levels on the scale of Bebop goodness.

Going Too Far

These first examples were all based around the “exception” spots in the lines but maybe it also works in other places.

If you start with this:

and usually, you would just add a half-step between E and D

But here taking a lower chord tone also sound great:

And again adding leading notes to the leading note and a few other half steps you have a great line like this:

Which is a line that you can move around in the scale and turn into a Dm7-G7 lick and create this II V I:

I will go over some more examples on how to write lines using Barry’s Chromatic scale in this week’s Patreon video, but maybe that is anyway a topic for another video. Let me know in the comments

Going WAY Too Far

One thing that I remember from the 1st year I went to the piano classes in the Hague was how Barry talked about harmonizing this chromatic scale. He had gotten this idea from one of the piano players in the Hague, Erik Doelman, who sadly passed away a few years ago.

At the time, I took that exercise and tried to move it to guitar with drop2 voicings, and it was pretty much unplayable, but again, the idea is simple and you can sometimes find some nice things in there with some VERY dissonant chords.

Essentially you take a chord voicing and then just move each note through Barry’s chromatic scale.

For a Cmaj7 that looks and sounds like this:

I suspect that I did the same thing but started with a C6 voicing which complicates it a bit more, but as I said I don’t remember.

And this is a great exercise for your fretboard overview, exploring this exercise and you can find some pretty crazy chord sounds that can be fun to throw in there as passing chords.

Get the PDF and GuitarPro on Patreon:

You can get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon here:    

Get the PDF!

You can also download the PDF of my examples here:

Get a free E-book

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

Sign up for my newsletter – Get the II V I Ebook

 

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Join 7500+ Other Jazz Guitarists 🎸Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics then, please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter Google+, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

Overlooked Barry Harris Wisdom That Is Amazing Advice For Jazz

Leave a reply

In the late 90s when I traveled from Copenhagen to The Hague to follow masterclasses with Barry Harris at the Royal conservatory I didn’t realize that I was going on a trip that would really change the rest of my life.

Going to that masterclass would change a lot about how I thought about music, and the trip would also make me move to another country to really go deep into the study of Jazz at the conservatory there. Of course, when you are in the middle of it you can’t know that while it is happening but it is fun to see how that works.

Barry Harris was of course an iconic Jazz teacher having taught everyone from Paul Chambers to John Coltrane and Wes Montgomery, and his very complete approach to teaching Jazz has taught 1000s of people.

Some of the things I learned going to those masterclasses really changed a lot about how I was studying music and quite a few of those things are not what is mostly discussed when we talk about his teaching. That mostly stays with notes, scales, and chords. Those things are important of course, but if you take a step back and look at some of the overarching principles of how the lessons work then there are other things that are as important, and actually also relevant beyond Jazz as a style.

Practice Technique On Songs

Song with exercise moving around it (maybe sheet music showing arrows or analysis moving a phrase from one chord to the next)

A few bars with triplet arpeggios fading into licks (Often an exercise will naturally evolve into a lick just taking it through a song.)

The Masterclasses at the conservatory would often start with learning a song, so Barry would use a scale exercise to teach you the chord progression, even if most people usually knew the song already.

It would usually be starting with a basic scale exercise, just to make the chords clear and help you have a starting place for the lines that would be created later. Then it would gradually evolve bit by bit into a complete solo where you would learn some great vocabulary and melodic techniques along the way.

The advantage of linking scale practice to actual music is HUGE. Whatever you practice as an exercise is a lot closer to becoming a flexible part of your vocabulary if you immediately work on it on a song. Often an exercise will naturally evolve into a lick just taking it through a song.

Another way that this is also incredibly effective is in terms of taking a piece of vocabulary and then really exploring how to get the most out of it, and a lot of Barry Harris exercises and systems were really made to be able to do that easily, something that is not mentioned so often. When you move an exercise around a chord progression like that then you need skills for making it make sense on different chord types and really know what works and what doesn’t work on a chord.

And of course, Barry would keep it exciting by pushing the tempo up, sometimes even putting money on whether anyone could play it, oddly he never seemed to lose.

Write Licks And Write Solos

Strangely enough, the next exercise is pretty global. Most of the masterclasses I went to from Barry were centered around him teaching a song and writing a solo on that song.

In that way a masterclass would teach you:

  • The Song and The Chord Progressions
  • Vocabulary And How To Construct Lines
  • How To Deal With Smaller Progressions within the songs, something you can take to other songs

And that exercise is exactly what I think you should work on: Composing vocabulary on songs. For me, this was very useful for learning vocabulary and making it a flexible part of my playing, and using this as an exercise can easily be a big part of how you develop your vocabulary and explore how you can add new material to your solos.

Another place where writing material is useful is when you are dealing with a spot in a song that is difficult. Slowing it down and constructing lines, figuring out what really works, what fits together, and how to make it playable is the best way to go, and clearly also how Barry works his way through songs.

Write licks for the difficult part of the song:

Of course, you are probably not going to be able to write solos that are as good as what Barry seemed to produce in pretty much every class, but that doesn’t mean that composing lines won’t teach you something and help you get further, even if it is only by making you wonder why something doesn’t work.

  • The Song and The Chord Progressions
  • Vocabulary And Constructing Lines
  • How To Deal With Smaller Progressions within the songs

Turn Vocabulary Into Exercises

What all of these exercises have in common and what is one of the strongest aspects of this is that everything is about connecting every single note you practice to the solo you want to play and the songs you want to learn.

And actually, that is something that very often gets lost in planning practice and creating exercises.

It is not enough to play the exercises, you also need to link them to your repertoire and your vocabulary because you need to think about whether the exercises improve your playing.

For me, the shining example of this was the exercise of playing diatonic arpeggios with leading notes that I learned the first time I went to the Hague for the masterclasses, but there are a lot more examples in there. I covered a few of these in this video on scale exercises that are already Jazz licks, there is a link to that in the description.

Making your own exercises is a great way for you to develop your vocabulary and get better at constructing lines.

Very often these types of exercises are really just combinations of two or more exercises, for example, you can practice using Barry’s chromatic scale exercise:

and maybe you want to also work on being more flexible with your triads so you combine that with this exercise:

Together you get lines like this:

And that can be put to use like this:

This connection between what you want to play and the exercises you make for yourself is useful for being efficient, but it is also a lot more motivating and fun to work on things that you actually use in your playing.

If you want to explore some more examples of how you can work on this and see how Barry teaches that in one of his classes then check out this video where I show you how to construct scale exercises that are already Jazz vocabulary and actually use one of his examples as well.

Get the PDF and GuitarPro on Patreon:

You can get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon here:

Get the PDF!

You can also download the PDF of my examples here, just fill in the form:

Get a free E-book

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

Sign up for my newsletter – Get the II V I Ebook

 

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Join 10000+ Other Jazz Guitarists 🎸Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics then, please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter Google+, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

These Scale Exercises Are Immediately Great Jazz Licks

Leave a reply

You want to use the things that you practice, so if your scale exercises are already solid vocabulary or solid licks then that is, of course, a lot easier. Practicing scales should not just be dry technical and boring. What you work on should really connect with what you want to play in your solos and be more than just moving your fingers. So let’s have a look at some great examples of exercises that are really just “Instant Bebop” vocabulary.

Practice Bebop Arpeggios, Not Just Chord Tones!

This is an important exercise! In my experience, the best way to practice arpeggios is as diatonic arpeggios in a scale like this.

That is of course, super useful but also in itself not that inspiring.

Let’s add two things that we love about Bebop and Jazz:

  1. Chromatic Notes to add tension and movement
  2. Interesting Rhythms to keep it grooving and alive

Let’s first work a bit with making the rhythm just a little bit more interesting.

One way to make the rhythm more energetic could be to play the arpeggio as an 8th note triplet like this:

This is something that immediately gives you licks like this:

and you can turn that into a scale exercise like this:

If you play this exercise then you can use this rhythm on all the chords and in a lot of different places, and it already starts to sound like music.

The Chromatic Leading Note

Another great way to use arpeggios that are “Instant Bebop” is combining the triplet with a chromatic leading note:

Of course, you want to work on this for all the arpeggios, so taking it through the scale gives you this:

And, besides sounding like Charlie Parker or George Benson out of the box, this means that you can make licks like this:

Here I am combining the Cmaj7 with some chromaticism, something that both Parker and Benson do all the time.

You can also put it to use on a G7:

There are a few things you want to learn from this example:

  1. The arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord is great (here it is Bø over G7)
  2. Leading notes can sound great on the downbeat like the Eb on beat 3
  3. Large intervals in a scale run sound great! (I’ll return to that later in the video)

And all you have to practice is playing the arpeggio as a triplet and add a chromatic leading note before the first note. Before we move on to a great Barry Harris Exercise then don’t forget that the descending arpeggio sounds great as well, a simple version without the leading note gives the 1st note of the arpeggio a nice accent like this:

Barry Harris Knows A Few Tricks!

The first exercise was something that I learned from Barry Harris when he was giving masterclasses at the conservatory in the Hague, this next exercise is also from those masterclasses. It is what Barry calls pivot arpeggios, and what often is also called octave displacement, but the way Barry shows the exercise really already makes it like practicing building blocks for great licks.

The concept is really simple: First, you play the arpeggio and end by going down one step in the scale.

The second part is the same melody, but now you move the phrase down an octave except for the first note.

Let’s translate this to the guitar, an easy place to play it would be F major like this:

I imagine you can already hear how this already just sounds like a short lick you are moving around, and actually, both the standard way of playing the arpeggio and the pivot version is great as a line.

here’s a II V I in F major:

And it is a solid option for an Fmaj7 line as well:

And as I mentioned, you can also use the “un-pivoted” version as a great way to frame or target a note with an arpeggio like I am targeting the 3rd of the Gm7 in this line:

And cleary Barry knows his stuff because the triplet version of this melody is also a great option:

Until now it has been about getting arpeggios to become amazing Bebop lines, but you can actually also work on this with simpler scale exercises.

Bebop Boost Your Scale Runs

This exercise is just playing the scale in diatonic 6th intervals, a really pretty sound in itself but not immediately an amazing Bebop line.

I guess this is the least obvious exercise, but as you will see it is incredibly useful!

The reason why it doesn’t sound like a lick is that you are playing so many of them next to each other, so you need to spread them out a bit and add them to something like a scale run.

And this is what I used in the previous examples like ex 3 and ex 4, the concept is pretty simple. If you have a scale melody then see if you can add an extra note when you are on a chord tone. In Example 14 that was on the root which adds an E. In example 3 it was the 3rd down to the 6th, and placing it at the end of the line makes it even more dramatic.

Get the PDF and GuitarPro on Patreon:

You can get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon here:    

https://www.patreon.com/posts/these-scale-are-57253779

Get a free E-book

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

Sign up for my newsletter – Get the II V I Ebook

Get the PDF!

You can also download the PDF of my examples here:

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Join 7500+ Other Jazz Guitarists 🎸Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for topics then, please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter Google+, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.